Episode 050 - Luminous Presence
Recorded: October 1, 2012

After talk of "Endless Summer" weather in Southern California, Quebec City's 17C and fall color, Portland, Oregon's 80F degrees. Steve and Ruth described their continuing practice of painting all night on the fullmoon. Steve wonders if his painting, "East Houston Woods," is finished -- he submitted it to "Friday Art Critique".

Ruth continued work on the collaborative "cover" of a Monet waterlily pond painting, she and Steve call, "Monet Lilies". She said it had been difficult for her to find her place in the painting until they gridded it and it's study - now, it's a pleasure to paint.

Emory's called rewriting his novel, "Dangerous Dayz" drudgery and Steve shouted, "don't do it!", prompting a discussion of rewriting. Emory reports moments of delight and energy in the narrative. He's been reading other writers, enjoying the writing of Frank Hickey who he's known personally for decades. Frank Hickey choses to live "a low life" in embattled urban areas and has worked as a police officer in New York, China, and Los Angeles, his novel is "The Gypsy Twist".

Mary asks Emory about his re-writing progress, Emory says he's one-third through going over each line, installing more verisimilitude to assist the reader. Mary says she depends on the rewriting process and enjoys it. Steve doesn't think artists should do work that feels like "drudgery", but wait until we feel differently about the work. It takes effort for Emory to put himself in front of the work, once there, he finds the joy.

Erik is in idea-generating stage, as so, enjoyed the NYTimes piece on Junot Diaz Hates Writing Short Stories. Mary admires Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Erik relates to Diaz's attitude towards writing short stories. Emory is fascinated by the compelling, high minded writing Diaz achieves while using low, street, vulgar phrases.

During re-writing of an earlier work, Mary found evidence of her writing's maturity by her no longer needing to write down to the level of her character's education and experience.

When Emory asked about Steve's writing projects, Steve reports falling asleep at the cafe while revising his marketing book Get Big On The Inter-Webs. "It wasn't drudgery, was it?" Emory asked for a big laugh.

Mary found in the third novel of the trilogy she's preparing that she did not use quotation marks for dialog. Since the first two books do use them, she's wondering whether to add quotation marks to the third, or strip them out of the first two. Soliciting opinion, Ruth says she likes the simplicity of not having quotation punctuation, but needed them for clarity in her most recent writing. Emory reviews two examples, James Joyce and Cormack McCarthy, who don't use quotation marks. At first, Dangerous Dayz, had none, but he later installed them to help himself and the reader. Mary likes the challenge of making the dialog clear and attributed. Ruth asks if Mary thought she taking the quotation marks out would create the need to further revise the writing of the first two books, Mary is not sure.

Emory asks Mary if she made discoveries about the characters as she goes from book to book. Mary sees her characters growing and found the act of editing for the trilogy satisfying.

Emory has noticed in increase in the use of footnotes, for example, in books by Junot Diaz and David Foster Wallace. He appreciates as an underground river of another narrative. Steve wonders how the footnotes are handled in eBooks. Ruth has seen footnotes open a new page. Mary thinks footnotes are a post-modernist technique and wouldn't want to see it subverted by technology.

Steve states his objections to paper books as being user unfriendly because they don't have adjustable font size and they're not illuminated. This opens a discussion on illumination for paintings with Steve reporting that the best lit show he's seen was Lazarides popup show, Outsiders NY, Peach suggesting a gallery show where paintings were viewed in the glow of everyone's ebook reader screens, and Ruth saying that she and Steve often look at their work in low ambient light or moonlight.

Emory restates his observation that every work of art there is illumination recalling a storyteller's campfire. James Joyce called it "radiance". Steve wonders if his latest, "East Houston Woods" has gone too far towards luminosity - it is very high key. Steve explains his paintings are an ecstatic celebration of vision. Emory recalls early critical writing, "On the Sublime" by Longinus, demonstrates the luminosity of genius writing.

Erik recalls Dostoevsky taking inspiration from chiaroscuro of paintings. Emory finds Dostoevsky's racism and anti-semitism dark and evil. He was alcoholic, a gambler who managed to harness his issues and write transcendent works. Erik remembers Dostoevsky's epilepsy, that he had great flashes of inspiration connected to seizures. Steve recalls an epileptic artist he know who liked to ride on the edge of seizure because most clarity she experienced was just prior to grand mal seizure. Peach has had experience with seizures and agrees about the clarity. His experience was of being in a dream-like state where he had coherent conversation which to others were gibberish. Mary and Peach considered parellel universe explanations.

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